There has been great interest in providing Internet access at minimal economic cost. While most computers now are pre-configured for Internet access, a significant percentage of households still do not have a personal computer. Thus, it has now been proposed to provide a data processing system that, much like a VCR, may be connected to a television set and used in lieu of a personal computer to provide Web access through a conventional remote control device associated with the system unit. Such a system enables the television to become, in effect, a “Web” appliance. The viewer can rapidly switch between conventional television and Internet access using the remote control unit.
All of the conventional “Internet” access tools and navigational functions are preferably “built-in” to the system and thus hidden to the user. One such tool is a browser, which is used to provide the user access to the Internet's multimedia information retrieval system, commonly referred to as the World Wide Web. Access to the Web is provided using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Typically, a browser issues HTTP GET requests to servers in the World Wide Web by passing packets over the network and receiving Web documents. Another Internet tool is electronic mail, which uses the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). File transfers are effected using another protocol, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
It would be highly desirable to intercept or monitor client side IP activity in a Web appliance. Such operation, for example, would facilitate filtering of connection requests regardless of the type of protocol associated with a particular request. Monitoring client side IP activity would also be useful to enable a service provider to collect information about the user's browsing preferences. Such a mechanism would also be useful in serving as a “firewall” to prevent the Internet client from accessing restricted machines on the network.
The present invention addresses this need in the art.